Renault Trafic Van Rental in Paris

The Renault Trafic is a mid-size van that we rent and deliver across Paris, and it does two very different jobs: moving cargo, or carrying up to nine people. We're gorentcar, an online car rental service, so you book the Trafic online and we bring it to your address in the city instead of sending you to an airport counter.

This page covers the parts that actually decide the rental: which version you need, what fits inside, how the van handles Paris streets and car parks, and how pickup works. We've handed plenty of these over, so we'll also say when a smaller van would serve you better.

Two Trafics, and which one you need

The Trafic is the workhorse of our Renault rental Paris range, and it comes in two body styles that aren't interchangeable. One is a panel van built around an empty load bay. The other is a minibus with windows and three rows of seats. Choosing the wrong one is the most common mistake we see, so settle this first.

The cargo van

This is the version most people mean by Trafic. The cargo body comes in a few configurations:

• A short L1 van, around five metres long, with roughly 5 to 6 cubic metres of load space. That covers a studio or one-bedroom move, flat-pack furniture, or a band's gear for the night.
• A longer L2 van, about 40 centimetres more, for bulkier loads or long items like a disassembled bed frame.
• A crew-cab version that seats up to six and keeps a shorter load area behind, for when you need to move people and tools on the same trip.

All of them are diesel, with a manual or automatic gearbox, and you drive any of them on a normal category B licence, since the Trafic stays under the 3.5-tonne limit.

The nine-seat people carrier

The passenger Trafic seats eight or nine on individual rear seats that fold flat and, on some versions, swivel to face each other. It's the sensible pick for a group heading to the airport, a wedding, or a day out of the city, where an estate car runs out of seats. You can drop a row to mix passengers and luggage, though with all nine seats in place the boot behind them is modest.

What fits, and getting it around Paris

The number that matters most in Paris is height, not length. The standard H1 Trafic stands under two metres, so it clears the barriers at most underground and multi-storey car parks. That's the difference between parking where you're loading and circling the block while a taller van gets turned away at the ramp.

Width and length are the trade-off. At just over five metres long and about two metres wide, the Trafic threads through traffic far more easily than a full-size Master, but it's still a van. The tight one-way streets around the Marais or Montmartre take patience, and a kerbside space big enough for it is never guaranteed. For a flat move or a single large item, the smaller Renault Kangoo is often enough and much easier to park.

On emissions, the diesel Trafic is rated Crit'Air 2, which lets it into the Paris low-emission zone under current rules, including on most pollution-peak days. If your dates fall during a restriction, check the rule for that day before you load up. If the Trafic is more or less van than you need, our van range in Paris has other sizes.

Driving it, and how pickup works

From behind the wheel the Trafic feels more like a tall car than a truck. The dashboard comes straight from Renault's passenger cars, the driving position is high, and visibility over Paris traffic is good. The automatic is worth having if you'll sit in stop-start city traffic. The manual is fine for longer runs out to the coast or the countryside.

Because we deliver, the van comes to you. We drop it at your home, office, or hotel anywhere in Paris at the time you book, and collect it the same way, so you're not hauling boxes to a counter first. You can pay with a debit card, we hold no deposit, and mileage is unlimited. That last point matters on a van rented precisely to cover a lot of ground in one go. Tell us whether you need the cargo van or the minibus when you book, and we'll confirm what's free for your dates. Bring a valid licence and ID for the named driver at handover.